Russian Opposition Politician Says Authorities Put Pressure On His Grandmother

Russian opposition politician Ilya Yashin says authorities in Krasnogorsk, a city near Moscow, have been harassing his grandmother and the private retirement home she is living in.

In a statement on Facebook, on March 14, Yashin wrote that an aide to the Krasnogorsk city prosecutor, Yulia Krikovtseva called the retirement home administration and ordered them to stop services for Yashin's grandmother.

"She openly said that if my grandmother, Aleksandra Yashina, is not evicted from the retirement home, "that business will simply be destroyed." She threatened to unleash inspections, namely by fire-safety officials and Rospotrebnadzor [the consumer safety watchdog]," Yashin wrote.

According to Yashin, a police officer visited the retirement home "a week ago and politely advised the administration to get rid of 'that Yashina to avoid possible problems," but the retirement home officials rejected his "advice."

Earlier this month,Yashin, who is head of Moscow’s Krasnoselsky municipal district, accused Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin of launching a media campaign to depict him as someone who cannot take care of his own 85-year-old grandmother.

Yashin said in a video statement on YouTube that similar attacks on him and his grandmother took place last year after he announced his intention to take part in the Moscow mayoral elections.

"And now there are new elections soon, to the Moscow City Duma [city assembly], and again those in the Moscow Mayor's office are scared that I will participate in the polls," Yashin said, "That is why dirt and lies are again being thrown at me and my family, and speculations about my grandmother are being spread," Yashin said.

Yashin, a vocal Kremlin critic, co-founded the Solidarnost (Solidarity) opposition movement in 2008.

Another co-founder of Solidarnost, former Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, was shot dead near the Kremlin in February 2015.

In 2017, a Moscow court found five men from Russia's North Caucasus region of Chechnya guilty of Nemtsov's murder and sentenced them to lengthy prison terms.

But Nemtsov’s relatives and associates believe his killing was ordered at a higher level.